Tag: drama
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Getting Ready for Short & Sweet Penang
This is the third year that I’ve been involved with the Short & Sweet Theatre Penang festival which is kicking off next week. In 2011 I submitted my short play “Drive All Night” which came home with the Audience Choice Award. That was a lot of fun. Last year my script “No in Spite of…
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Writing: On the Spot Inspiration
Where does writing inspiration come from? I suppose every writer would answer this in different ways. I love what I call “on the spot” inspiration, when an idea suddenly strikes me out of the blue and it is seemingly unconnected with anything else I had been previously thinking. Then from that small kernel, a solid…
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When realism made everything unrealistic.
When does trying to be real backfire and become realistic? I guess this is the journey I’ve been on in the theatre these past seven years. I started out as a director trying to make everything on stage seem as realistic as possible. I remember the first play I wrote, we figured out how to…
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How to respond when an actor asks, “What should I do?”
I get to teach and work with young actors. Some have experience. Others do not. It’s incredibly fun seeing someone take the stage for the first time and try to find their way, try to understand their character, try to understand the relationships between the other characters, and try to, ultimately, figure out what they…
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The Purpose of Dress Rehearsals
I’ve been directing stage plays for seven years now. I’m no professional, and I’ve learned a lot throughout the years. Dress rehearsals are the emotional peak that every director has to scale before a new show. Once it arrives and the actors poke through the clouds and stand on that emotional peak, a director’s job…
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Stage Painting: Day 2 (4 days till showtime!)
After backbreaking painting the day before, we (and I still mean all the real artists who know what they are doing) finished our stage for Boardwalk Melody: An Original Musical. Here’s what we did: This is where we finished the day before. A light brown paint over the boardwalk. Then came texture on the boards.…
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Stage Painting: Day 1
Well, I got a crazy idea (and now my back is scolding me for it). Let’s paint the stage for our new show “Boardwalk Melody.” After all, it needs to have a boardwalk, right? So today we started painting and designing it. Now I must say, I take no artistic credit for anything we are…
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Ever Try a Readers’ Theatre?
I have now been part of two Readers’ Theatre Productions. What’s a Readers’ Theatre? It is as it sounds. The actors have scripts in their hands and read the play aloud, using vocal inflections and limited movement to replicate the emotion of a dramatic production. Or at least that’s how most Readers’ Theatres are described.…
Author Mark W Sasse 